Snapchat Snaps Back at Ex-Employee's Lawsuit

"Make no mistake: This late-breaking bid for a judicial, and public, forum to air his sensationalist allegations is all about publicity."

Snapchat says the ex-employee who's suing the company for wrongful termination is only after publicity, according to a petition to compel arbitration filed Wednesday.

Anthony Pompliano sued Snap, the app's parent company, earlier this month. He claims he was duped into leaving his job at Facebook to oversee Snapchat's growth team and was fired for being a potential whistleblower after he discovered the company was lying to investors to drive up the price of its forthcoming IPO.

Prior to the litigation, Pompliano initiated arbitration against Snap — and that's the only forum the company says is appropriate for this dispute.

"Now, however, Pompliano has run to court, filing a Complaint that recycles — often verbatim — the same allegations that he put in his arbitration demand and that he has litigated for half a year before the arbitrator," writes attorney Alexander Nestor. "Make no mistake: This late-breaking bid for a judicial, and public, forum to air his sensationalist allegations is all about publicity."

Pompliano says court intervention is necessary to keep Snap employees from blackballing him during the course of the arbitration — but Snap says he never made that complaint before the arbitrator.

"[H]e cannot ask this Court to preserve the status quo for a phantom ruling that the arbitrator will never make," writes Nestor. "He should be compelled back to arbitration."

Further, Snap says Pompliano isn't telling the full story.

"An important point he neglects to mention is that he got another job with another tech company in the social-media space not long after leaving Snap," writes Nestor. "But in a twist that will sound familiar, Pompliano got fired from that job too, after working there for less then two months. He then hit that employer with a lawsuit that also raises allegations of fraud."

Snap says his allegations against the company are false and he is merely "a disgruntled employee who was fired for poor performance." (Read the motion in full here.)